Last weekend, Carmelo Anthony re-signed with the Knicks, but only after experiencing free agency for the first time in his career. Nevertheless, the organization never seriously feared losing Anthony. &quot;Carmelo…

Andrew Wiggins came to summer league to get an early education on the NBA game, from playing against better competition to learning about what his new coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers will demand of him as a pro.

77 comments on “Knicks Morning News (2014.07.18)”

A bad player is a bad player always. With Felton, you have 23,000 minutes of data that show that he is a bad player. Bargnani would be better at 5 MPG than at 40, but only because, cumulatively, his possessions are bad possessions.

Unless you believe that there’s a precipitous drop-off in production after a certain minutes threshold, every half-court possession begins the same way, and they generally end in similar ways. Maybe situationally some are different, like at the end of a close game, but I would say that there’s very little qualitative difference between most possessions.

The “eye test” refers to the ability to determine an individual player’s value

I recognize that I’m not being very scientific here (what else is new; right, Ted?), but something tells me that “point guard regularly dribbles ball to the top of the arc” is easier to visually determine than “has a quick first step” or “shoots an above-average step-back set shot.” I would hesitate to confuse my broad assumption about the game of basketball with, say, ruruland’s incessant (and patently wrong) sophistry.

By the way, I saw Wiggins block the heck out of Kyle Anderson in the Spurs highlights the other day. It’s going to happen a lot. Dude doesn’t elevate. Still, watching Kyle Anderson pass is amazing, and given how many minutes he’s playing in summer league, I think you can bet on him for 20 mpg during the regular season. Spurs are going to be fresh (again) in the playoffs.

Felton’s pretty much an average point guard who can’t shoot. He’ll get you assists, some rebounds, some steals and he protects the ball well. He also sucks on D, but at least some of that is probably down to a certain goateed idiot and his defensive ‘system’. So at least for next year he’s an adequate backup.

By the way, I saw Wiggins block the heck out of Kyle Anderson in the Spurs highlights the other day. It’s going to happen a lot. Dude doesn’t elevate.

This could be an advantage for Kyle Anderson, given how smart he seems. The fact that everyone and his mom knows he’s slow and flat-footed will probably make every athletic wannabe shotblocker giddy at the thought of going against Kyle. He will pump-fake and drive by, making a perfect bounce pass to a streaking Aron Baynes in the process. I love guys who are aware of their limitations (and WP48, WS48 and company do, too).

Saw a Kyle Anderson interview on True Hoop, love that kid. He was full of praise for how beautifully the Spurs play the game of basketball. I will go on record saying he will outperform Andrew Wiggins this year, at least on the advanced metrics I care about.

If I were the Cavs i would trade Wiggins as fast as humanly possible….

Trading Wiggins for Love is the biggest no brainer move since the Chris Paul trade….

Yeah, I’d be rushing to dump Wiggins off. I thought he was a bad first pick, but reading some articles about how “high level NBA executives” think the Cavs would be foolish to deal him perhaps it wasn’t. He’s pretty clearly very valuable as a trade asset, and if the Cavs can turn him and a bum like Waiters into Kevin Love that’s a great pick.

If Kevin Love entered the 2014 draft at his current salary, I think he’d be the #1 pick. If that’s the case, you make the trade. If they’re really looking forward to scratching off the Wiggins lottery ticket, you keep the pick.

I don’t know about you guys, but I tend to walk past the scratch-off machine at the supermarket without much of a problem.

Kevin Love for Wiggins is a no-brainer, Love would be a perfect sidekick for LBJ… Cleveland would be downright terrfying with both, specially if LBJ’s training regime and professionalism rubs off on Kyrie.

But I don’t think Wiggins will be a terrible NBA player, he just won’t be the offensive machine people expected him to be when his high school youtube videos came up. There’s a lot of value on a potential elite defender in the NBA who can score 15 a game and is super athletic, even if he never turns out to be the prototypical #1 pick people expected him to be.

Cleveland has been gifted the best opportunity a franchise has had in the last 4 years, and it’s all because Golden State is incredibly stupid.

I think they should definitely do it even if they think Wiggins one day will be better than Love. Right now Love is one of the ten best players in the game. You already have the best player in the game. Their games are very complimentary. Plus you have another pretty good player. This move makes them huge favorites to win the East (this year and likely the next few years). Just do the freakin’ trade!

Vegas has the over under on Cav wins at 53.5. They’ve already said that if the Cavs get Love the over under will be 63.5.

I mean exactly, it’s not like Andy is chopped liver as a low usage center. He is the perfect player to pair with Love and Lebron. Moves really well off the ball, doesn’t need the ball otherwise, strong defender.

I think it would be great if Cle trades Wiggins for Love, and then Love announces his long term max extension on a 1 hour TV special with Lebron at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and with Kyree dressed as uncle drew. Beach Boys optional….I dont’ give a shit there.

Their biggest problem would surely be interior defense (Varejao is a good defender but we know he’s injury prone and not much of a goalie). If they could snag Biyombo from Charlotte this could be a scary team. Yes, I said Biyombo. With James and Love around, even Bismack could score here and there by virtue of being alone under the rim.

I know everybody on here hates Waiters, and his chuckery has definitely been undeniable his first couple years, but I think there’s a chance he can be pretty good on this team. If Lebron and Blatt can get him to stay in his lane a little bit more he did shoot 37% on a pretty high volume of 3s last year. That’s valuable next to Lebron, Love and Kyrie if you can just cut out some (a lot) of the other stuff. And he’s still young enough that those kind of lessons might sink in. He might not be a total lost cause.

That team definitely looks ultra high powered on offense, but it remains to be seen whether they can defend enough to be a real contender. Lebron seemingly lost a step on that end last year, Varejao is older and injury prone, and the rest of the roster looks really bad on that end. But yeah, that offense. Lebron and Love playing 2 on 5 would probably put up some decent offensive numbers.

Oh yeah, I think Waiters is not as bad as he looked his rookie year and when Irving was out he looked downright good, so I think there is definitely some hope there that if Irving has to change his game to match Lebron (and possibly Love) then that bodes well for Waiters, too, as both he and Irvin’s biggest problem has been ballhoggery. If they become souped up versions of Mario Chalmers, that could really help them.

It’s an amazing frontcourt until Varejao gets hurt again. They should just keep him in storage until the playoffs.

I would be very worried. Varejao has missed serious time last 4 seasons. Maybe it would be safer to use the Wiggins chip to get a much reliable center, although there aren’t many. Sanders?

One thing i am not convinced is the supposed fit of Love with LeBron. LeBron is already a great rebounder, an efficient scorer and gives good assists, which are also the main strengths of Love. Would not fit better someone who is a good defender? Love is not a great defender. Sure they can play together, but i don’t think it is going to be better than the sum of its parts.

I think the Cavs would be better with Andre Drummond, but that’s probably not happening. Love is a good second option. And he’s so very much better than any of the rookie-contract players they have. Combined.

Maybe it would be safer to use the Wiggins chip to get a much reliable center, although there aren’t many. Sanders?

This is a thought that I’ve also seen on SB Nation. While I agree that getting an interior defender should be priority #1 for the Cavs, I wouldn’t touch Sanders, which come with a 11 $million contract attached for the next 4 years and a long issue of personal problems, with a 30-foot pole UNLESS LeBron is totally ok with getting him AND Milwaukee is ok with just a Bennett-Thompson for Sanders swap.

Also, last year Sanders went for a WP48 nosedive: from .208 to .092, so from wonderful to less than average. Ouch.

Shane Larkin looked good. Not great on offense, but he moved the ball well and was super disruptive on defense (5 steals). Timmy did his thing, scoring well and managing 1 assist to go along with his 17 shots.

The offense was horrible in the 1st quarter-lots of turnovers and some confused looking play, but they settled down and were much better the rest of the game. It’s still weird to see lots of movement. And I think the summerknicks are probably better on defense than the 2013 Knicks were. Can’t read too much into the summer league, but it’s at least a promising start for Derek Fisher.

Getting Love is definitely an upgrade for them and I think he’d fit perfectly well on offense with Lebron. I just don’t know if the Cavs would ever have enough defense to win a title, or at the very least would have to use the full MLE next year to find that big man to anchor the defense. Offensively Lebron, Love and Irving will put up some video game numbers once they figure out how to play with each other, but Irving is a huge negative defensively and Love is fine a man defender, but sucks at making proper rotations in help defense, much like Melo. Lebron is 30 and he can’t be superman for 35-40 minutes per night anymore. I think trading for Love is an awesome move that elevates them to definite favorite in the East, but it also gives them very little cap flex moving forward and will cost them draft picks to address their depth and defensive issues. It’s worth the gambit, but it’s not a slam dunk championship move IMO.

If LeBron loses a half step, he’s still a full step ahead of most of the league. The guy is a transcendent defender and will be until he retires.

He’s great defensively now in taking care of his assignment, but he’s not the help defender last season that he had been previously. I think it’s a lot harder for him to crash down on a driver and recover out to his man than it used to be. That affects a lot of things when Irving is going to be your starting point.

Did you notice that in the first half when we ran the two man game on the weak side they were very aggressive on overplaying the handoff. In the second half we abused them going back door on this 4-5 times within the first 5 minutes. In game adjustments apparently may be a thing this year.

It’s worth the gambit, but it’s not a slam dunk championship move IMO.

Nope, but it’s the best move they can make. List of players who fit better than Love on offense: none (Dirk Nowitzki?). List of players who fit better than Love considering both offense and defense: Anthony Davis, Joakim Noah, Marc Gasol.

Since neither Davis, nor Noah, nor Gasol are on the market this is a super no-brainer. Not a slam dunk championship, but a 90% probability (barring injuries – and not to Varejao, it is a given that he’ll play around 55 games) to go to the Finals. From there, you need only 4 wins, and who knows. Cleveland has never won anything, they have to do this.

EDIT: oh hey, I forgot Durant and Ibaka. Well, they too are not available.

That grantland round table was hilarious. Simmons’ logic is very silly:

Wait, see how great wiggins can be w LeBron, you can always make that trade later.

I think Wiggins’ value is the highest it will ever be right now and in 5 years we’re going to laugh at the idea that he was traded for love. Not saying he’ll be a bust, just a good player whose value is inflated by hype.

I’m praying the wolves try toplay this season out and compete with Love. The team who should be waiting is them. Let the cavs be on the hook for wiggins play. Come February, when wiggins is shooting as poorly as his history suggests he will, you can probably get more than wiggins. But now you’re being forced to value wiggins as some special prospect just bc he went #1.

Lebron has got to keep #6, right? He made that big thing about how no one should wear #23, so it’d be weird to see him go back to #23. I just hope he doesn’t pick a new number. Although people who sell jerseys would love a reason to make the old Cav jerseys obsolete. :)

Trading Wiggins for Love is the biggest no brainer move since the Chris Paul trade….

Seriously!

I mean, how many guys *with actual NBA expereince* in the league would you NOT trade for Kevin Love today (assuming he signs a max extension, etc)? Maybe 5-10 guys?

People are ridiculously bad at making decisions based on imperfect information. “Andrew Wiggins might be a superstar” someday is a completely idiotic argument when Kevin Love IS ACTUALLY a superstar level player today! Wiggins might be Scottie Pippen… or, way more likely, he might be Josh Howard or Jamal Mashburn (borderline all-stars chosen out of my ass). It’s not like this guy tore up the NCAA last year!

And Kevin Love is 25, he has a LOT of prime years left in his tank assuming the injury bug doesn’t keep knocking him down (a legit concern IMO).

Wiggins’ value isn’t likely to be higher until he becomes a Top 10 player in the league, which is super not guaranteed. It basically can only go down from here, especially this year when the expectation is that he’s going to look super raw.

On the one hand we have Kevin Love, an all-star. Not top-5 but a really strong player. A sure thing and he’s young. On the other hand we have Andrew Wiggins. He might be another LeBron and be his protege. He might be the next Michael Jordan. Or he could be the next Bargnani or Bennett. He’s probably somewhere in-between.

Man. This is a tough choice. I would trade Wiggins to get Love but I know there’s a chance I passed up on a Mt Rushmore-NBA type transcendent player. I would hate to be the guy who made that trade! (Jim Fregosi for Nolan Ryan anyone?)

Lebron’s got a two year contract. Wiggins is 19. He wasn’t that good in college last year. Now there are really good NBA players who weren’t great as college freshman, but even if Wiggins goes on to become one, its probably not happening in the next two years. The Cavs are under a lot of pressure to build a contender now. So if you can move Wiggins/Bennett and some salary filler and picks for Love, you really have to take that shot if you’re Cleveland.

The fan base could get really turned off if Love checks out mentally like Vince Carter did in Toronto. If you think you want Wiggins, I think you want him in your training camp this fall

I get that but Minny fans has suffered this long they can wait if the team put it out there that they are not just going to give love away. I guess there is a slight chance that Wiggins comes out like gang busters and the Cavs won’t trade him but that’s unlikely.

If I am Minny I would try to get Wiggins/picks/throw-ins and a third team to take Martin off my hands.

Up to nine years of control over Wiggins and up to nine years of control over Bennett for one year of Kevin Love is a fair trade. Cleveland gets more out of Kevin Love than Minnesota gives up, because there is no world where Love is going to decline his ETO or extend in Minnesota, and he has strongly hinted he will decline his ETO or extend in Cleveland.

I wonder how Cody Horn, Kevin Love’s longtime girlfriend, feels about Cleveland. She is an actress (female lead in Magic Mike) and Hollywood royalty (father is Chairman of Disney’s Board of Directors).

The trade is basically Love for Wiggins straight up, because Bennett appears to be garbage. Maybe Bennett turns it around, but, uh, probably not. Has there ever been a player who played as badly as Bennett as a rookie and still ended up having a decent career? That’s not a rhetorical question, I’m actually wondering if there is one.

I’d ask for Wiggins, Miami’s #1 pick from next year, Memphis’ #1 pick from next year and whatever salary filler the trade needs to make it work. Considering how godawful Bennett was as a rookie I think I would rather take my chances with two other draft picks.

Bennett is the salary cap filler. Cleveland has to get over $10.8 million in outgoing salary to make the trade work. Wiggins is only $4.5 million (he could get up to $5.4 milion once he signs) right now. Bennett is due $5.6 million this year. Tristan Thompson could also make the numbers work.

Bennett’s interesting. He was so was so awful last year that its hard to imagine him ever being good. . .but at the same time he projected as having a good chance of being a servicable pro out of college. So if he is in much better shape and if he did have health issues last year, then maybe he turns into a bad draft pick instead of a Bargnani-class disaster.

Bennett looks pretty damn good in summer league. Really changed his body. Still doesn’t seem like the highest iq player, but he could become an Al Harrington type player. Rotten for a #1, but still a fairly good scoring 6th man.

I know you qualified it, ess-dog, but “Al Harrington-type player” and “#1 pick” in the same breath is like… the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Except for “Andrea Bargnani,” which should be synonymous with, “NBDL bench player.”

Allan Houston played in 79 games his rookie season. He logged over 1500 minutes. He had a TS% of .465; a PER of 9.0; and a WS48 of -.038. He shot under 30% from 3pt range, and had a reb% just a shade better than THjr’s.

Iguodala and Pippen both came into the league far more skilled than Wiggins- while neither were great shooters, they were both excellent ball handlers with great court vision and solid passing skills. Wiggins might be a better athlete than either but he’s decidedly lacking in real basketball skills. He’s much more likely to develop into an elite 3 and D guy than into either of those guys who are really point forwards. The idea that he might turn into LBJ (who had far more basketball skill at 15 than Wiggins has at 19) is pure fantasy. If he plays with LBJ, maybe he winds up a smaller version of James Worthy (who was a legit hall of famer) but I can’t see him developing into the kind of play-making forwards he’s being compared to given that he’s already gotten a ton of coaching for a guy his age.

If Golden State offers Thompson, then their offer can keep Minnesota a contender for the playoffs in the west (as the immediate drop-off from Love and Kevin martin to David Lee, Thompson and Harrison Barnes is not gigantic) but from a long-term perspective I’d probably still prefer to pick up Wiggins and the first round pick, as they’d be able to control Wiggins for years while rebuilding this year and having another nice draft pick next season. I’d choose that over maybe reaching the #8 seed and then having to pay Klay Thompson $11 million a year.

The key in the Cleveland deal for me is how does Minny judge Bennett? Is he even viewed as a plus or what? If he isn’t, then yes, Wiggins and a pick is likely not enough. Cleveland should have to throw in one more pick.